Showing results by author "Graham Greene" in All Categories

Three men meet on a ship bound for Haiti, a world in the grip of the corrupt 'Papa Doc' and the Tontons Macoute, his sinister secret police. Brown the hotelier, Smith the innocent American, and Jones the confidence man - these are the 'comedians' of Graham Greene's title. Hiding behind their actors' masks, they hesitate on the edge of life. And, to begin with, they are men afraid of love, afraid of pain, afraid of fear itself.

Twenty-two of Greene's very best stories are collected here, each of them bearing the hallmark themes that characterise his great novels: innocence and vengeance, love and hate, pity and violence. Writer and Greene aficionado, Yiyun Li, has arranged the stories into pairs, to be read together in contrast or in harmony – as a duel or a duet.

A leak is traced to a small sub-section of the secret service, sparking off the inevitable security checks, tensions and suspicions. The sort of atmosphere, perhaps, where mistakes could be made? For Maurice Castle, it is the end of the line anyway, and time for him to retire to live peacefully with his wife and child. But no-one escapes so easily from the lonely, isolated, neurotic world of the SIS.

Henry Pulling, a retired bank manager, meets his septuagenarian Aunt Augusta for the first time in over fifty years at what he supposes to be his mother's funeral. Soon after, she persuades Henry to abandon Southwood, his dahlias and the Major next door to travel her way, Brighton, Paris, Istanbul, Paraguay. Through Aunt Augusta, a veteran of Europe's hotel bedrooms, Henry joins a shiftless, twilight society: mixing with hippies, war criminals, CIA men; smoking pot, breaking all the currency regulations and eventually coming alive after a dull suburban life.

In a small continental country civil war is raging. Once a lecturer in medieval French, now a government agent, D is a scarred stranger in England, sent on a mission to buy coal at any price. Initially, this seems to be a matter of straightforward negotiation, but soon, implicated in murder, accused of possessing false documents and theft, held responsible for the death of a young woman, D becomes a hunted man, tormented by allegiances, doubts and love.

Carleton Myatt meets Coral Musker, a naïve English chorus girl, aboard the Orient Express as it heads across Europe to Constantinople. As their relationship develops, they find themselves caught up in the fates of the other passengers and drawn into a web of espionage, murder and lies.

A gang war is raging through the dark underworld of Brighton. Seventeen-year-old Pinkie, malign and ruthless, has killed a man. Believing he can escape retribution, he is unprepared for the courageous, life-embracing Ida Arnold. Greene's gripping thriller exposes a world of loneliness and fear, of life lived on the 'dangerous edge of things.'

Wormold is a vacuum cleaner salesman in a city of power cuts. His adolescent daughter spends his money with a skill that amazes him, so when a mysterious Englishman offers him an extra income he's tempted. In return all he has to do is carry out a little espionage and file a few reports. But when his fake reports start coming true, things suddenly get more complicated and Havana becomes a threatening place.

With superb skill and feeling, Graham Greene retraces the experiences and encounters of his extraordinary life. His restlessness is legendary; as if seeking out danger, Greene travelled to Haiti during the nightmare rule of Papa Doc, Vietnam in the last days of the French, Kenya during the Mau Mau rebellion. With ironic delight he recalls his time in the British Secret Service in Africa and his brief involvement in Hollywood. He writes, as only he can, about people and places, faith, doubt, fear and not least, the trials and craft of writing.

From a childish fear of the dark in "The End of the Party" to the chilling conclusion of the "Destructors" and the all-consuming selfishness of "May We Borrow Your Husband", this collection opens with three of Greene's most disturbing stories. Things take a surreal turn in "Under the Garden" before finally blossoming for a moment in "Two Gentle People", then there's a detective story and a brush with Greene's sardonic wit to finish.

This is the story of Francis Andrews, a young man whose betrayal of his fellow smugglers has left a man dead. Fearing vengeance, he flees and takes refuge in the house of a young, isolated woman who persuades him to give evidence against his accomplices in court. But neither she nor Andrews is aware that to both criminals and authority, treachery is as great a crime as smuggling.

In 1938 Graham Greene was commissioned to visit Mexico to discover the state of the country and its people in the aftermath of the brutal anti-clerical purges of President Calles. His journey took him through the tropical states of Chiapas and Tabasco, where all the churches had been destroyed or closed and the priests driven out or shot.

In a prison in Occupied France during the Second World War, the order is given that every 10th inmate is to be executed. Louis Chavel, a rich lawyer, draws the short straw and barters everything he owns to exchange places with another man and survive. Destitute but free, Chavel later returns to the house that he sold for his life, where he must face the consequences of his cowardice and seek redemption.

Arriving in post World War 2 Vienna, an American pulp writer finds his friend who was meant to be waiting for him has been killed under mysterious circumstances. Follow this mystery, starring Joseph Cotten, which trails through the murky world of the black market, with the involvement of the international police and the writer's Czechoslovakian girlfriend. This is one of the Classic Radio Theatre productions you will want to listen to over and over again!

A young boy, Victor, is collected from school by a stranger in a bowler hat - the stranger says he has won Victor in a game of backgammon with Victor's father. The stranger, known as the Captain, takes Victor to live with the sweet but withdrawn Lisa, where he serves as her conduit to the outside world. From mysterious beginnings, Graham Greene's final novel becomes a twisting thriller of smuggling, jewel theft and international espionage which culminates in a dramatic showdown in Panama.

Vietnam, 1952: Der Reporter Thomas Fowler berichtet für die Londoner "Times" aus Saigon. Das Land steckt in einer schweren politischen Krise...

Graham Greene's account of a five-year personal involvement with Omar Torrijos, ruler of Panama from 1968-81 and Sergeant Chuchu, one of the few men in the National Guard whom the general trusted completely. It is a fascinating tribute to an inspirational politician in the vital period of his country's history and to an unusual and enduring friendship.

Graham Greene's 'long journey through time' began in 1904, when he was born into a tribe of Greenes based in Berkhamstead at the public school where his father was headmaster. In A Sort of Life, Greene recalls schooldays and Oxford, adolescent encounters with psychoanalysis and Russian roulette, his marriage and conversion to Catholicism and how he rashly resigned from The Times when his first novel, The Man Within, was published in 1929.

Fully restored and remastered, Heritage Media presents the greatest of vintage artists in classic dramas from English and Irish Literature. Here is the legendary Laurence Olivier starring in ‘When Greek Meets Greek’, adapted from the original tale by Graham Greene and John Gielgud starring in 'The Happy Hypocrite' adapted from the original tale by Max Beerbohm. Theatre Royal is a unique series of classic radio dramas produced in the 1950's by the late Harry Alan Towers.

En 1946, en un Londres en el que todavía se perciben las heridas de la guerra, Maurice Bendrix se encuentra por casualidad con el diplomático Henry Miles, a quien no veía desde hacía tiempo. Henry está casado con Sarah, con quien Maurice había tenido un affaire durante la guerra. Cuando Henry le confiesa que sospecha que Sarah le es infiel, será Maurice, empujado por la curiosidad y los celos, quien decida contratar a un detective privado para averiguar la verdad.